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Jurors in the trial of Briton Neil Entwistle have heard a recording of the moment he was told his family was shot dead.

Entwistle’s defence team offered no witnesses after the prosecutors rested their case this morning.

The 29-year-old former IT worker denies killing his 27-year-old wife Rachel and nine-month-old daughter Lillian Rose on January 20, 2006.

Judge Diane Kottmyer told the jury at the Middlesex County Superior Court that there would be a break for legal arguments before closing speeches would be heard.

Entwistle had a secret life in which he trawled the internet for escorts and looked at websites about bankruptcy, killing and suicide before shooting dead his family in the four-poster bed at their new home in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, the court has heard.

The jury panel of eight men and eight women was told that a post-mortem examination found Rachel was shot in the forehead at close range and Lillian was killed with a bullet which passed through her abdomen and lodged above her mother’s left breast as she cradled her on the bed.

Entwistle, who told US authorities he found the bodies after returning from a shopping trip, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of the double murder.

Earlier, the jury heard a recording of a phone call between Middlesex state trooper Robert Manning and Entwistle on January 26, after he fled to England on a one-way ticket.

Entwistle simply responded “OK” when Mr Manning, the lead investigator in the case, told him the deaths were being treated as the result of “foul play”.

He also said that when he saw the bodies there was “no question” that they were dead and asked whether the trooper thought his wife and baby had suffered.

When told it was “almost certainly quick”, Entwistle said it was “almost like peace of mind” because the “state of Lilly” led him to believe it “looked like there was more” than a gunshot. Entwistle also said he wanted to know the exact time of their deaths.

“If it was minutes before I walked in, that’s going through my mind now. It would just be nice to know. It wouldn’t change anything,” Entwistle said.

Later, speaking about being told that his wife and baby died from gunshot wounds, Entwistle added: “It’s a shock and a relief to hear it. “You don’t want to know what’s happened; you don’t want to believe what’s happened; but once you know what’s happened you can at least try to deal with that.”

US prosecutors, led by assistant district attorney Michael Fabbri, brought a total of 46 witnesses before the court during the 12 days in which they laid out their case against the Briton.

Elliot Weinstein, defending Entwistle, simply stood up from his chair next to the defendant and indicated there were no defence witnesses.

Entwistle’s parents, Yvonne and Cliff, and his younger brother Russell, all from Kilton, Worksop, have been at court throughout the trial.

They sat across the aisle from Rachel’s friends and family, including her mother Priscilla and stepfather Joseph Matterazzo.